customer experience

SEARCH MARKETING… IS IT IMPORTANT?

Search marketing. We’ve all heard of it. But just how vital is it for a business to have a website that is search engine optimised?

The statistics

Over time, search engines have rapidly gained popularity. In fact, the average number of daily Google searches in 2018 totalled 5.8 billion, that is 71,780 searches per second. Marketers can no longer neglect the trend that majority, in fact 93%, of consumer online experiences begin with a search engine. Furthermore, according to Junto, based on the consensus of 57% of B2B marketers, SEO generates more leads than any other marketing activity.

Contrary to popular belief, search marketing is considered critical for local businesses. Google found that four in five consumers use search engines to find products, services or experiences nearby. Of these people, those who used a mobile device to seek local information were 50% more likely to actually make their way to the store.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Businesses can no longer ignore the advantages of SEO. It has become critical for businesses of all sizes to remain competitive by ensuring their SEO is up to scratch. The proof is in the statistics. Companies that effectively implement SEO will have a significant advantage when it comes to page visitors and therefore, customers.

The importance of SEO can sometimes be neglected when it seems that paid search advertising is the easy way out. Truth is, 70-80% of consumers will ignore a paid search result and scroll down to where the organic search begins to start their journey.

It is important to note that SEO is not all about improving your rank on a certain search engine. Rather, it is about making your website better for your consumers to ultimately increase sales. When your consumers have a positive experience through their online interactions, it contributes to the positive affiliations that they associate with your brand and therefore contribute to establishing brand loyalty. On the contrary, if your website is difficult to navigate or takes too long to load, the opposite is true.

Mastering the art of SEO

In reality there is no fool proof way to reach the number one rank in an organic search. Search engine algorithms are a closely guarded secret that mean there are hundreds of tactics to aid a brand in increasing their search rankings. These can include both on-page and off-page methods to increase your ranking.

There are a range of tools available to help a business evaluate their current SEO ranking. These may include MOZ, Google Search Console or Google Keyword Planner to name a few. As organisations gradually continue to try and crack the search engine enigma and integrate various technological innovations such as AI, more and more resources will emerge to make it easier for organisations to maintain high levels of SEO.

Do you see a shift in the way consumers search for information in the future? Will technological innovation like Artificial Intelligence make or break this part of the consumer experience? Could this ultimately destroy all the hard work performed to optimise billions of websites or provide greater insight in understanding the consumer?

DATA AND THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Today’s modern business environment is saturated with more competitors than ever before. Consumers have easy access to a huge range of competitors. This creates a need for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors in order to stay ahead of the pack. This is where the concept of the consumer experience comes into play.

Before you can be a front runner in the customer experience you provide, there is a whole lot of back end work that needs to be done first. Big data is an incredibly valuable resource that enables a business to gain significant knowledge of their customers and market, vital to establish a meaningful customer experience. Despite the immense benefits that are associated with using big data, there are also challenges that businesses should be aware of.

A significant issue surrounds storage. IDC estimates that the amount of information stored in IT systems worldwide “…is doubling in size every two years, and by 2020 the digital universe … will reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.” This is an insanely large amount of information for anyone to comprehend, let alone store efficiently and keep track of. It is vital for big data to be structured and organised in order to ensure it is useful and insightful for organisations.

Similarly, another issue associated with big data is being able to generate opportune insights. There is no point constantly collecting and gathering data if it isn’t being used to make decisions. When there is an unfathomable amount of information, it can be very difficult to extract insights that enable an organisation to gain a competitive advantage. Ultimately, the overarching goal of using big data is to find the pivotal chunks of data that drive your organisation’s competitive position. This requires an organisation to have a clearly defined problem early on to ensure they do not get distracted and lose sight of the issue they are trying to solve.

How does an organisation use big data to enhance the customer experience?

Previously, I have discussed the notion of customer touch-points. When discussing big data, touch-points are essentially data generating units for organisations. Each touch-point helps to create a consumer profile based on online purchase patterns, social media profiles, search terms and even banking transaction history. Firms like AXCIOM sell these personal profiles from data they have collected, providing other organisations with data to better understand and engage global audiences.

Once an organisation has the relevant big data to enhance their competitive edge, they should segment the broad customer market into smaller groups based on shared characteristics. The benefit of segmenting with big data means that organisations can delve deeper into their customer data to develop offerings that consumers really want at the right time. Similarly, this will also enable an organisation to identify and connect with niche segments that they previously would not know where or how to find.

After segmenting their consumers, organisations may wish to conduct sentiment analysis or topic modelling to gather a quick insight into opinions and attitudes of certain groups. From this information, an organisation can perform an abundance of predictive, web and data-driven optimisation analysis to ultimately formulate a successful strategy to enhance consumer experiences.

Once an organisation has collated all of this data about their consumers, it enables the business to provide consumers with a memorable experience. A success story of customer experience optimisation can be seen in Disney’s innovative Magicband. Providing consumers with an experience that is both impressive and distinctive creates sentiment among your customer base. When it is clear that a brand is making an effort to enhance the customer experience, customers feel important and as though the business has earned their allegiance. As a result, this encourages brand loyalty and life-long customers.

Do you believe that customer experience optimisation is a vital component to a brand’s digital marketing strategy? In such a competitive operating environment, do you agree that it should be a large focus for all organisations?

A MODERN-DAY CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Imagine walking into your favourite store. There is a familiar smell that radiates off the products that surround you, a friendly sales assistant who asks about your day – your experience is consistent every time you return. It is why you keep coming back! This is what you might perceive to be the typical customer journey, right?

Truth is, the customer journey begins the first time a consumer becomes aware of a brand. The customer journey begins long before you walk through the entrance of the store, and continues long after you walk out too.

In a time before the internet, a customer would typically become aware of a brand through word of mouth, exposure to print advertising or a billboard. However, the age of digital disruption has profoundly impacted this path. Today, there are unlimited variations of a customer journey. This is hugely due to the expansive amounts of digital information available and communicated to consumers, often spoon-fed through their daily social media fix. The abundance of options consumers have available to purchase products or services online makes it vital for an organisation to effectively predict and foresee a customer’s purchasing behaviour from initial brand awareness to brand advocacy.

“The average customer uses 10 channels to communicate with companies”

Scott Rheinlander, SalesForce

The importance of providing meaningful and impactful customer experiences has become an emerging priority for organisations. It is more critical than ever for businesses to make memorable points of contact with consumers in order to remain competitive. As a result, there are a range of digital technologies that allow businesses to capture customer experiences in real-time and assist marketers to evaluate which touch-points are most critical in the customer journey.

ATTRIBUTION MODELLING

Sample Customer Journey with Attribution Modelling, Bright Vessel

A debate that arises from customer journey mapping surrounds the concept of “Attribution Modelling”. In the image above, Bright Vessel visually displays a sample customer journey, mapping out the number of touch-points and then relating them to the corresponding departments.

So, how do you evaluate which touch-point holds the most value? There are many types of marketing attribution models that use different approaches to assign value to specific channels. The question is, how do you achieve consistency across products within an organisation or across organisations? Is it fair to compare apples with oranges?

Although there is a lot of fancy technology for organisations to utilise, if attribution modelling eventually comes to be a legitimate form of asset valuation, this issue will come to be a headache for marketers and accountants alike. Ultimately, it is not an accurate framework and rather, should be used as a guide for businesses. I believe that attribution modelling can definitely be beneficial for an organisation. However, it should not be solely relied upon for decision making nor asset evaluation due to its absence of a range of components.

Do you believe that monetary value should be distributed on the basis of attribution modelling? Do you agree that it should not be the only tool used for decision making?